Episode 2: WERKIN with Rory Stirling on the power of diversity of thought

‘The important thing for me is I’ve found something I love doing, and I get up every day really motivated about working with the entrepreneurs that we do.’

Rory Stirling knows what it’s like to be an entrepreneur seeking investors. Now, on the other side as a co-founder and partner of BGF Ventures, Stirling has brought this experience to his approach as an early-stage tech investor. In Hayley’s interview, Stirling talks about how the success of a company relies on its founding team’s execution of ideas. ‘Execution comes from the founding team… 99% of value created in startups is from the founding team,’ he notes.

Stirling emphasizes the importance of ‘getting out of the way of great founders and supporting them to make the decisions that they want to make.’

‘The best bit about my job is that I meet hundreds of people a year and every now and again, I meet somebody who just totally blows me away and they change my perspective literally on the world around me.’

In addition to building strong relationships with founders, Stirling talks about the importance of building teams of diverse individuals because it's the only way to achieve diversity of thought.

‘The diversity of thought is how we get to better decision-making. You need diversity of thought to help ask the right questions.’

To hear more about why working with founders is like going on a long car journey and the power of acknowledging when you don’t know the answer, listen to Rory’s interview on iTunes or SoundCloud.